[1] After repeated contributions to Nyonin Geijutsu, a magazine solely dedicated to female writers, she moved to Tokyo for the second time (after a previous one-year-long stay) in 1930.
[1] In 1940, Ōta's war novel Sakura no kuni ("The cherry land") was awarded a prize by the Asahi Shimbun, and received considerable public acclaim.
[4] She continued with a series of works in favour of Japan's expansive foreign politics and war efforts, which she later omitted from her curriculum vitae.
[5] Stricken with the fear that she would become a victim of radiation sickness, she worked feverishly to complete City of Corpses (Shikabane no machi), an account of her experiences in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing.
Ōta's 1953 short story Fireflies (Hotaru) follows the protagonist's meetings with survivors of the Hiroshima bombing and also addresses, as do some of her other works from that era, the suicide of writer Tamiki Hara.